“In what denominations can they be bought?”
The Manager smiled.
“Well, my dear sir—surely it is immaterial?—Some are high—for convenience of transport or what not—it’s a great innovation. Really! If you’d told any one even twenty years ago....”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mr. Petre, “what’s the highest denomination?”
“Well, really, £10,000, I think.”
“I should like to see one,” said Mr. Petre, “if you have one in the place.”
The Manager rang and the glorious thing appeared—presented in a Morrison folder.
Mr. Petre took it out and handled it with curiosity and interest.
It was printed on one of those new metal sheets which they make the notes of nowadays, and which, they tell us, will replace all paper in the long run; thin, stronger, even lighter; 500 to the inch—almost like the India paper of the old late nineteenth-century books, only not quite so flimsy.
It wasn’t ugly—for an official thing; about eighteen inches by twenty-four and all the little coupons very neat.